Q. I see that Windows 10 comes with a new browser – Edge. And Internet
Explorer is still available as well. In the past I used Firefox. Do I need
to switch to Edge or can I continue to use Firefox?

A. Edge is the new, fast browser from Microsoft. Over time the market share
of Internet Explorer (IE) has been going down, primarily because people were
shifting to Firefox (from Mozilla) and Chrome (from Google). Each browser
has its own advantages and disadvantages. For instance, Chrome is fast and
it has great support for HTML5 (a newer Internet web page language). It also
has good security, a built-in flash player and PDF viewer. But it is no
longer the fastest and its Do Not Track privacy feature is not easy to find
and use.

Firefox has a great new design and it is the most customizable browser –
meaning it has more add-ons and extensions available than do other browsers.
It has good security, works in many environments and it also has a built in
PDF viewer. It does not, however, have built-in Flash support like Chrome,
and there is no 64-bit version.

But you don’t really need to choose only one, browser. I have, on my
computer, all four of the above mentioned browsers. I admit I mainly use
Firefox, largely because of the add-ons. For instance, when I do
presentations at the Prescott Computer Society Special Topics presentations,
I frequently show videos that I find on YouTube. Rather than take a chance
on the internet connection in the library being fast enough for video, I
download them ahead of time using a Firefox Extension called SaveFrom.net.
It lets me download directly from YouTube. And sometimes I use Chrome or IE
if they will display a page better than Firefox.

Edge is new, and Microsoft says it will have great extensions available in
the future. Stay tuned on that.

Published: Courier 9/5/15 - Page 11A

This article has been written by a PCS member and was published in "The Daily Courier"
of Prescott, Arizona on the date listed above. While current when
written, these articles may contain outdated information and you should
check with other sources prior to relying on the article's contents.